TRANI, ARCHDIOCESE of - City and archdiocese in the province of Bari. Over an area of about 670 sq km it has a population of 223,175 inhabitants, almost all Catholics, distributed in 36 parishes, served by 135 diocesan priests and 40 regulars; it has a seminary, 9 male religious communities and 32 female ones (Ann. Pont. 1953, p. 428). It has the diocese of Barletta (v.) united to it, the archiepiscopal title of Nazareth and the perpetual administration of Bisceglie. Residence in T.
The legend of Sts. Redento and Magno, concerning the origins of the Church, does not allow any certain elements to be drawn on the matter (Lanzoni, I, p. 301). It would not be surprising if, following a very widespread method, the title of bishop were given to that Magno who is remembered in an act of donation of June 834, by which the gastald Radeprando offers to bishop Auderis "ecclesia S. Magni Tranensis episcopi, quam ibse (sic!) pater meus, de licencia domni Leopardus, episcopus predecessoris tuis, a novo fundamine construxit" (A. Prologo, Le carte che si conservano nell'Archivio del Capitolo metropolitano di T., Trani 1887, p. 23, n. 1). The first bishop established with certainty is a Eutychius, who, according to the Vita et translatio s. Sabini of Canosa, of the first half of the 9th century (BHL, 1443), was present at the supposed consecration of the church of S. Andrea at Barletta performed by Gelasius I (492-96), and certainly in 501 and following years took part in the Roman Councils of Pope Symmachus. After him are known: Sutinio, participant in the Synod of Paul I (761), Leo at the Nicene Council in 787 (Ughelli, VIII, col. 891) and the two aforementioned Leopardo and Auderis, of the 9th century. According to Prologo (v. bibl.), however, Eutychius, Sutinio and Leo would be fictitious.
However little is known of the life of T. under the Byzantines and the Lombards, the few surviving documents testify during this period to such a rapid political and commercial development that the city soon managed to detach itself from the giudicaria of Canosa and to have its own gastald and sculdascio like Bari, Monopoli, Conversano, etc. T., already a castrum and a center of trade with the East, becomes one of the major maritime cities of the Beneventan Duchy and, together with Bari, remains the last bulwark of the Latin rite, while not disdaining politically the agreement and protection of the Emperor of the East. Once the Lombards had fallen and the struggle between Byzantines, Franks and Lombards had broken out, the city underwent the alternating fortunes of the struggle. In this period the names are recorded as bishops of T. of Rodostano as defender of the Latin rite around the year 1000, of a John I (1010) and then of another John to whom Leo, metropolitan of Acrida (v.) among the Bulgarians, addressed a celebrated letter (PG 120, 836) concerning the union of the Greek Church with the Latin one that was then in question because of the schismatic claims of Michael Cerularius (v.). This John II (1053-1059) was deposed by Nicholas II for collusion with the patriarch of Constantinople; Delio, elected in the same year, was present at the consecration of S. Angelo in vulta.
The elevation of the see to an archbishopric took place in the last years of the Byzantine domination which, in order to preserve the city at all costs, lavished titles and honors. The first archbishop of Trani, Bisanzio, is a leading figure at the end of the Greek occupation and in the early times of the Norman conquest (1073). Under him the territory of the diocese becomes very vast. With Canosa in decline, the ecclesiastical possessions of what had been the oldest and richest Apulian bishopric are divided between Bari and T., which thus extends its boundaries from the limits of the Sipontine diocese as far as those of Bari, Brindisi, Acerenza and Venosa. Under Bisanzio, present in his new dignity at the consecration of the basilica of Montecassino, the ecclesiastical territory includes Corato, Andria, Bisceglie, Barletta, Minervino, other minor cities, Greek and Latin monasteries and even Polignano beyond the diocese of Bari (Prologo, op. cit., pp. 55-57). After Bisanzio, the series of archbishops records Ubaldo (1118), Verterando or Bertrando (according to Gams) present in 1129 at the coronation of Roger in Palermo, and Pellegrino (d. 1141) who erected the Cathedral and transferred there with great pomp the relics of St. Nicholas the Pilgrim. Among the successors, Sanmaro (1194) was a prisoner of Henry VI and freed in 1187; B. Brancacci of Naples (1328) was ambassador of King Robert to Benedict XII at Avignon and then vice-chancellor of the Kingdom. During the Western Schism, which had so many consequences in the Kingdom, Clement VII in 1282 transferred archbishop G. Tura Scottini to Luni and in his place elected first Matteo and then Giov. Battista dell'Aquila; but Urban VI created A. De Lamberti (d. 1383), whom Enrico and Riccardo de Silvestri of Trani (1390) succeeded, created by Boniface IX. With Franc. Carosio elected (1418), Martin V united with T. the see of Salpi (v.). Under the government of card. Giov. Domenico De Cupis, Adrian VI wished to separate the two sees, and, with the consent of the cardinal, appointed as bishop of Salpi the cardinal's own chaplain. However, on the latter's death Clement VII reconfirmed the union (1532) only to break it a few months later. The same was repeated in 1544 under Paul III, but the latter united them three years later definitively and transferred to Lavello the newly elected bishop Stella. In 1771, after a vacancy of three years, the see of Trani had Giuseppe Antonio Davanzati, formerly ambassador of Clement XI to Charles VI, subsequently elected by Benedict XIV patriarch of Alexandria.
The reorganization of the diocese by Pius VII (1818) greatly favored T. The Churches of Nazareth and Canne, whose bishop had also governed the Church of Barletta, were united to that of Trani together with Andria and Minervino, while the archbishop of the time, L. Pirelli (1818-20), became perpetual administrator of the diocese of Bisceglie. In this way T. has today largely reached the territorial extent it had in the Middle Ages. Patron of the archdiocese: St. Nicholas the Pilgrim (feast on 26 May).
Monuments. - The greatest of the city's monuments is the Romanesque Cathedral, which arose on the ancient church of S. Maria, called in the documents episcopi and still preserved in the vast lower space beneath the central nave. The new building was begun in 1094 almost on the sea and dedicated to St. Nicholas the Pilgrim, the wandering Greek who died at T. in the very year the works began, and was canonized four years later under Urban II. Because of the existence in situ of the ancient church, to which the new crypt beneath the present presbytery was added, the floor of the Cathedral rises 5 meters above street level, and one ascends to it by two access ramps. The Romanesque church, in form and structure, is one of the most typical Apulian cathedrals: a tall, slender facade facing west with double lateral slopes; a cruciform arrangement of the voids in the compact mass of pinkish stone (rose window and round-arched single-light windows); a simple and harmonious line in the T-shaped plan with a very tall transept and three apses with ornate windows. The facade is furthermore, as it were, animated by that perceptible play of curves found in the lower zone and on the outer wing of the right small nave: the eight arches of the facade, remains of a destroyed portico or one under construction as at Bitonto, Ruvo, etc., crown the main portal, richly adorned in the archivolts and jambs, and the bronze doors cast by Barisano da T., the author of the doors of Monreale and Ravello, in the second half of the 12th century, with an art in which Byzantine and Arab influences are perceptible, besides Romanesque ones (see, more than the panels with symbolic figures and geometric ornaments, those with the scenes of the Deposition and of Barisano at the feet of the patron saint). The interior, with three naves, has restorations and disfigurements, such as the ruin of the capitals, chiseled, stuccoed and decorated with oil and varnish in 1837. The matronea are intact, adorned with 14 trifora windows as in St. Nicholas of Bari and the cathedral of Bitonto; still in place in the presbytery are the remains of the ancient floor with the scenes of Solomon in the temple and David with the lyre. Of great interest are the crypt of St. Nicholas and the episcopium, which preserves the relics of St. Leucius, bishop of Brindisi, translated in the second half of the 7th century into a specially hollowed-out loculus; the Gothic tomb of Passapepe Lambertini and a good fresco depicting the Madonna with the Baptist and St. Anthony.
L'archivio conserva 734 pergamene, tra i più vetusti documenti medievali della vita pugliese. A destra della facciata è il campanile, la più imponente forse di tutte le torri pugliesi, alta 65 m., poggiato da un lato sulla church, and for the rest on a sturdy base lightened by two ogival arches. Its construction is owed to several artists: the first two storeys with Romanesque mullioned windows belong to "Nicolaus sacerdos et protomagister" (mid-13th century); the third and fourth, with three- and four-light windows, are from a century later; the fifth, with five-light windows, small arches and a terminal spire, dates from 1353-65. Recently its stability was feared for.
Besides the cathedral, T. has other notable churches. That of St. Andrew, among the oldest domed churches in the region, is a Greek cross with three apses and strong central pillars supporting the hemispherical dome. To the same type, but with three domes, hemispherical on the inside and pyramidal on the outside, the largest on a high drum adorned with small arches, belongs the church of St. Francis, founded in 1176 by the abbot Benincasa and dedicated to the Most Holy Trinity. Characteristic are the single-pointed facade adorned with small arches, the archivolts of the portal resting on two hanging columns, and the surviving pillars of a portico perhaps never completed. Another Romanesque building is the little church of Ognissanti (12th century), erected in the courtyard of the hospital of the Templars and until 1312 the property of that Order. It has a double front portico with capitals on slender polystyle columns and three portals finely adorned with sculptures (the middle one preserves two panels with an Annunciation), an interior with three naves with double-arched arches, in which are preserved a Veneto-Oriental Madonna and a Virgin with Saints of the Venetian school of the 16th century, and three graceful apses all in local stone like the rest of the building.
The cities included in the diocese, among the most populous in the province, also preserve notable monuments. Of the ancient cathedral of Corato (13th century) there remains only the ogival portal with the bas-relief of the lunette depicting Jesus between the Virgin and the Baptist, and the 14th-century bell tower truncated by lightning. Much more interesting is the small Gothic church of St. Dominic with a crossing supported by molded ribs and slender corner columns.